Priti Pandurangan — Information Experience Designer

Traditional cartographic theories rely on a static concept of a place, a “concrete reality” ^[1] that changes slowly, if at all. However, to account for the transient nature of sensory information, a conceptual expansion is required to encapsulate place as ever-changing “spatio-temporal events” (Massey, 2005). Multi-sensory approaches to mapping shift our focus from the formal to the sensory aspects of a place and require us to consider “activity, rhythm, and above all, ambience” ^[2]. My praxis attempts to disrupt our customary patterns of movement, redirecting our attention to the “sights, sounds, smells and other psychogeographic details of a place” ^[3]

I facilitate sensory data walks that test my experimental score-based ^[4] framework within a participatory context to collect and map sensory data. The primary objective of these "walkshops" is to investigate the diversity of sensory experiences among participants and create a space for collectively mapping & exchanging subjective experiences related to our shared spaces.

Participants are given a RISO printed zine that includes a walking score or prompt, a dedicated space for recording data, suggestive vocabulary to aid in the articulation of sensory associations, a map, and supplementary materials to support documenting and representing their immediate sensory surroundings.

During the walk, participants are guided by the score through various subjective experiences, relying on their sense of sight, sound, smell and touch to explore and interpret their surroundings.

Upon completion of the walk, participants engage in a collective mapping exercise, charting their sensory experiences on their maps. This process culminates in a group discussion where participants share their maps and reflections, contributing to a collective narrative of the shared sensory landscape they all experience.